Mama to two little boys, Lilo (3 and a half years) and Ju (5 years), I blog about our crafting, baking and general activities.

Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Spiky Holly Wreath

Holly branches freshly cut from the garden

Day 5
This post comes with a safety warning: today's craft is not to be attempted by toddlers. In fact, my hands are asking me why I even attempted it myself. But to me, nothing welcomes Christmas time more than a festive holly wreath on the door.

And there is a huge holly tree in our very small town garden - Darling Him threatens to cut it down every year, but I nurture its wild overgrown ways for the sole purpose of making my annual Christmas holly wreath. I actually choose to endure the painful prickly wounds on my hands gained during making my wreath. It's all worth it.

As it was a bright and sunny day today, Lilo and I went into the garden to cut some holly branches.

While I set to work using gloves and secateurs, Lilo enjoyed watering the remains of our diminutive "vegetable" patch and watching the frozen leaves trapped in the abandoned truck. In the meantime, Ju was hibernating in the buggy - he does seem to missing all the fun lately.

Lilo waters the plant bed

Fun times with frozen things

Back indoors, we started by making a circle of several lengths with garden wire.

Garden wire circle structure

Then I attached the holly branches with florist wire to the metal structure, overlapping them a little as I went.

Attaching the first branch

Three branches in

Once I had completed the circle and my hands were already starting to feel quite prickly, I tucked in the holly leaves that were pointing towards the centre. Holly leaves, unlike toddlers, don't have a will of their own and will happily be tucked out of the way. However, they are very prickly. Ouch.

Then we added some decorations, some of them wrapped around the structure, others just hot-glued onto the structure. Lilo enjoyed the shiny decorations and touched the leaves a few times to double-check how spiky they were.

Decorations - shiny!

Finally a ribbon with a bow, and all that was left was to hang it on the front door. Aaaaaah!